


Threes & Sixes

by JeanLuciferGohard



Category: The Locked Tomb Trilogy | Gideon the Ninth Series - Tamsyn Muir
Genre: Alternate Universe - 1920s, Blow Jobs, Cunnilingus, F/F, Hand & Finger Kink, M/M, Plot What Plot/Porn Without Plot, Vaginal Fingering, everyone is criminal with ambiguous feelings, gratuitous use of folksy narrative voice
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-30
Updated: 2020-04-30
Packaged: 2021-03-01 19:13:31
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,718
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23932105
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JeanLuciferGohard/pseuds/JeanLuciferGohard
Summary: The Tridentarii are mob money so old it's practically Biblical, and almost on the level, and Sextus and Hect are running a blackmail ring outta the house at 66th and Cross, when they're not playing jazz for liquored-up criminals.It's not a bad racket.It's just that for a couple of folks as smart as they are, they sure do have a habit of sleeping with wrong people.
Relationships: Camilla Hect/Coronabeth Tridentarius, Naberius Tern/Palamedes Sextus
Comments: 2
Kudos: 42





	1. Chapter 1

It’s a Tridentarius party, which means it’s so big and so loud and so crowded that a body might as well be totally alone. Nobody to talk to, even though everybody who matters is there, governors and gamines and a fella up from Cincinnati who can talk to ghosts, honest to God, can talk to ghosts, and who won a heavyweight title back in ‘09, before the war. Poor guy, nobody told him that ghost-talking was a Tridentarius racket, and she does it better, so he’s been out on his ear all night; all anybody wants to talk to him about is the fighting. Poor kid.

They got the whole place done up like Easter came down with a hell of fever, and woke up raving; gold and pastels and gold and enough flowers, enough green to run a rainforest outta business, and whiskey, and gin, and vermouth, and absinthe, and vodka and lime. Tequila straight from Mexico, Cuban rum. A goddamn champagne fountain sunk into the floor, splashing all over the marble tile, deep enough to swim in, and folks have been, all night, though it’s levelled off now that Tridentarius the younger, the ghost-talking one, started up her bag in the next room.

Now the whole business just looks empty, vaguely embarrassed, like it knows it’s about to be kicked outta bed to walk home alone, but can’t find it’s shoes just yet.

Tridentarius the Older, the one who never went in for ghosts, she showed up late to the party with a goddamn leopard on a leash, rubbing it’s big, golden head into her hip like the only thing it’d been born to do was love her, which Palamedes had proclaimed “a bit much,” rolling his cool, grey eyes. And Cam had agreed, at the time. Still, the leopard’s gone now, sleeping it off in a corner somewhere, having failed to maul anybody, and Palamedes is off in the next room with the ghosts, plinking out a minor-chord accompaniment to the seance, it being common knowledge that the Tridentarii got a piano in every room, in different colours, for every day of the week, and they don’t do anything except to excess, with a full newspaper crew on standby, and appropriate musical accompaniment. 

It’s what they were hired for, anyway, her and Pal. Piano and jazz violin.

It ain’t why they came, though.

Point is, it’s just her, dark bob like you never saw one, razor-sharp, like it might slice open her smooth, dark jaw, in a grey suit the colour of six in the morning, alone in an embarrassed-looking room, with her violin, and her knife tucked up under her jacket, propped on her hip like the only child she’s ever likely to have, and the champagne fountain.

Almost alone.

There’s a _slosh,_ from behind her, liquor slapping on the tile.

“I know you,” croons a voice, dreamy, and languid, and throaty, full of teeth, “You’re with Sextus.”

And that ain’t wrong, Cam’s with Sextus, Palamedes, PhD, not that anybody asked, and they’re with the band, and the thing about being in the band is that nobody pays you any mind until they gotta _pay_ you, which, for Camilal Hect and Palamedes Sextus (PhD), includes appearance fees, and thirty dollars a month not to tell your wife about the chorus girls, or the Prohis about that party in the basement. It’s a neat little racket they have going. 

Cam turns her head, winkling a slip of paper out of a discarded tuxedo jacket like meat from an oyster, and tucking it into her own pocket.

“Who’s asking?” she says.

Coronabeth Tridentarius (call me Corona, dear, we’re all friends) giggles.

_Clink_.

The leopard’s back, leash dragging, pushing its head into the fountain, into her hand, like it couldn’t bear to go without. Corona kisses it right between the ears, lips wet with champagne.

“This stuff tastes better, now it’s illegal,” she murmurs.

“Probably the kerosene getting to you.” Cam drawls.

“Oh, I _like_ you. I like you _much_ more than Sextus, he’s not funny like you.”

She props her elbows up on the edge of the fountain, and waves her pet away, golden hair slicked down her back, dress plastered transparently against her perfect skin. Her dress is almost the same colour as the cat is, a smoky feline tawny, dotted with jet beads and spangles. The tail of it floats behind her, wafting lazily in the champagne. She drops her head onto her curled-back wrists, and smiles.

Her mouth is very, _very_ red.

“Are you fucking him? Babs thinks so. Can’t say I see the appeal, myself. Not _him,_ anyway. You, I like you. Did I already say that?”

Cam snorts. 

“No. No, I’m not.”

Only way to put off a rich girl, really, is to be direct, tell ‘em you may like violets, but this is a bad idea, darling, nobody minds the help, but Christ Almighty, they mind it if you get caught in bed with ‘em. She’s too smart for that. Cam ain’t one to get chased out with no references, nossir. Rather be blue-balled than black, any day of the week, a girl can take care of _that_ on her own, but Jesus and all His apostles can’t get you a paying gig back once you’ve lost it.

And anyway, the girl’s drunk as a skunk. She won’t remember.

“Oh, don’t be sore,” Corona pouts, dragging her thumbnail along the fat, bee-stung fullness of her lip, “Come sit with me.”

She pats the edge of the fountain, and rolls onto her back, arms stretched out the either side. Coronabeth Tridentarius is Temperance down by City Hall, and Justice by courthouse Uptown, Aphrodite in two parks and five galleries, her bust on every bust sculpted in the last five years. Champagne snakes down her throat, pooling at her collarbones and between her breasts. She lifts one foot into the air, silk stocking all shriveled and sheer, like a skin about to shed. Like if you could find the right bath, the right whip, you could flay it all off her, and there’d be something else entirely underneath. She rolls her ankle from side to side, and sinks back down, dress clinging to the soft curve of her belly.

“That’s a very kind request. I’m afraid I’ll have to decline.” Cam says, clipped, pushing down the heat in her gut. It don’t matter. It’s a bad idea.

“Oh, I don’t ask for anything,” Corona hums. Her eyelashes are black and wet, stuck thick to cheeks with alcohol and mascara. “People just give me things. It’s always been like that.” She kicks her feet up again, rolling her head to fix Cam with one glassy, purple eye. “Would you give me something? If I asked?”

“Are we talking business?”

Cam lofts an eyebrow. Shit, she can talk business, got her business suit on and everything. Got a violin case full of bullets and incriminating evidence, Cam can talk business. Long as business is all it is.

“Sure,” Corona coos “Let’s talk business. I wanna know what you think. Of this. Of me. What you _really_ think.”

“Gonna cost you.”

“I’m good for it.” She purrs. If she wanted you, she could have Cam dragged out in a pine box, full of holes. Might not even bother with the box. Could have the cat lay into her like a Christmas Dinner. They’ve been mob money so long, the Tridentarii, that most everybody’s clean forgot about it, but it’s what they are. She could snap, and have Cam dropped like a rock, and they both know it.

“I think,” Cam pauses, woking her jaw back and forth, “I think you have always been given exactly what you want, and you hate it, because you know you don’t deserve it. You didn’t earn it. You hate that it’s so easy. I think you want to be good at something, but you’ve never needed to be, so you’re not. You probably go through fifty-odd things a month trying to find it; it was fencing, last I checked. Boxing, before that. I imagine that’s why you dragged up that sadsack from Ohio. I think you wish you could hurt something, instead of having it done for you. I don’t think you’ll ever get the chance. I think you’re drunk, and sister’s better than you at threats.”

Her beautiful face contorts into a snarl, and then into a savage, throaty laugh.

“Oh, that don’t mean I don’t do alright as far as threats,” she giggles feverishly, unhinged. She looks, for a split second, like she might sob, before her face settles back into its liquored-up languor. 

“Still. Guess it’s my own fault for asking.” 

Cam waits, her hands perfectly still, not reaching for the girl, or her knife, or anything at all.

“Come by tomorrow.”Corona says, her expression shuttered like an abandoned building. “Still gotta pay you, don’t I?”

* * *

* * *

Palamedes catches her by the wrist before she goes, but his eyes are hidden behind his glasses, so Cam knows he ain’t about to stop her, not really, but he catches her by the wrist, and sighs, and says to be careful, says the Tridentarii have a way of getting under your skin.

And she elbows him in the ribs, fond, and says ‘Tridentarii’ is just about the most pretentious thing she’s ever heard out of his damn mouth, and he snorts like he can tell she wants him to, and corrects her, says it’s ain’t pretentious at all, it’s just he’s Classically Educated. Unlike _some_ people.

And he lets her go.

He’s like that.

The Tridentarii mansion looks different in the daytime, the glittering loudness of it gone dull and bruisy, like a bad hangover. It is still, despite that, dizzyingly, starrily beautiful, a golden sledgehammer straight to the skull.

Probably, Cam thinks, she oughta have known better.

Probably it was always gonna be like this.

Corona’s bedroom is red like the inside of a throat, and she kisses with teeth, and laughs with teeth, and scrapes her teeth over Cam’s neck, and it’s just teeth all the way down, tell you the truth, white in her mouth while she smiles and lays back into her duvet like she never had anything better to do in her whole life than lay there and be wanted.

“C’mon,” she urges, “C’mon, c’mere.I owe you, don’t I, I’m good for it, doll, c’mere.”

“Don’t call me ‘doll’,” Cam tosses back, shrugging out of her suit, and the lines of Camilla Hect are all straight and dark, like shooting rye, like a knife, like the exact opposite of Corona’s lush curves, with arrow of thick, dark hair shooting straight down from her navel to land between her thighs. Corona catches Cam by the hips, pushing up onto her knees at the edge of the mattress, and pushes her face into it, nuzzling.

“ _Doll_ ,” she repeats, circling her fingernails around the small of Cam’s back. 

And she may be a rich girl who never had anything better to do with her time, but there’s muscle under the softness, meaty and thick, and she’s got a foot or so on Cam, so when she _pulls_ , really pulls, they both fall backwards onto the bed, and Cam, well.

Cam’d rather be blue-balled than black. Rather be neither. If this is the payment, she’s taking it, she is gonna have herself a good time while it lasts. Cam sets to work.

She drags the flat of her tongue across one of Corona’s rosy pink nipples, the ones you can see on all three Graces down at the Rhodes Gallery, and then follows with her teeth. Turnabout's fair play. Corona yelps, a high, nervous thing that shivers back into her throaty laugh at the very last second. Cam sucks a bruise over her ribs, right under the curve of her breast, just to punch it out of her again.

She shoulders under Corona’s silk-stockinged thighs, and waits there, just for a second, just breathing. Plants one slick, messy kiss right over her cunt, just to because Corona doesn’t seem to want her to, wrenching impatiently at her hair, which Cam allows, for a bit, leaning into the tug and sucking leisurely at the other woman’s clit. She waits, tonguing at her entrance, until Corona’s tense as piano wire, clawing at the back of her head and whimpering like nobody can hear her, and then pulls back, batting Corona’s manicured grip away, and settling back on her heels.

“Ask.” Cam says, swiping at the slick on her mouth with the pad of her thumb.

Corona tosses her head, all exquisitely-bred outrage, like a racehorse, like a charity auction, looking up at Cam across the length of her own body.

“You must be from out of town if you think I’m gonna roll over and beg,” she pants, squeezing her thighs around Cam’s waist, “C’mon. C’mon, doll, finish the job.”

“If I wanted you to roll over, I could do it myself.” Cam drawls, and the idea is not without merit, so she curls her hand around Corona’s calf, thumb smoothing in a lazy arc over the silk, and then shoves the other woman’s leg back up over her shoulder, heaving to one side, and for all the muscle she’s got under her lush, soft curves, Tridentarius has no notion what to do with it, on account of she never needed to, and it’s a simple enough thing to get her pinned, wriggling on her stomach with Cam’s knee planted on her back and one arm twisted behind her shoulder to hold her in place.

Cam leans in, bent so low that Corona’s hair tickles against her mouth.

“Not asking you to beg, either. Don’t call me ‘doll’.”

“Then what? C’mon, I’m paying you, ain’t I?”

There’s a whine in it, a wheedle, a “jeez, you didn’t hafta go to all that trouble over little old _me_ ”, and it’s baked in, it’s practiced, it’s probably worked before on a hundred other people who’ve been in this big, red bed.

Cam ignores it.

“You’re fucking me,” she says coolIy, “That’s different. You wanna pay me, I want you to have to ask for something.”

“Hmmm.” Corona hums, and arches sweetly against the press of Cam’s fingertips dipping into her folds. Tries to, anyway. “Most people would consider the sex payment enough. I’m the best you’ve ever had.”

“Are you.”

“I’m the best anyone’s ever had. Everybody says so.”

Cam says nothing, just pushes one finger into her. Then two. Then curls, and you don’t get to be the kind of musician Cam is without a few callouses built up, and the push of them, the sting, and the fullness has Corona whining her outrage into the duvet, too gone to even realize she could break loose. Cam’s dropped her arm, is using the hand that held it to reach around her ribs and thumb at her nipple, and all Corona does is fist her fingers in the sheets and push her hips back with a ragged snarl.

“Ask.”

She’s on edge. She’d been on edge so long, poor girl can’t even see the drop anymore. Lost the shape of it. 

You don’t get to be the kind of blackmailer Cam is without knowing how to work the angles.

“Please,” Corona gasps, “please.”

Ain’t exactly asking, but it’s close enough, Cam reckons. Good enough for government work. Close enough to, that pressing the matter would likely end in somebody’s shot-up mortal remains fed to a leopard. You enjoy the good times while they last, and then you get the hell of outta Dodge, Cam knows that. She’s smart like that.

She slides off Corona’s back, and urges her hips up. Cams crooks her fingers, and lowers her head back to Corona’s blood-hot core, and works her with her mouth until she comes with a thin, shuddering wail.

Cam swings her legs off the mattress, rummaging for her suit. Girl can take care of herself.

Corona pushes her hair away from her face, laying on her stomach and looking back over her shoulder, propped up on one elbow the way some talented young buck out of Philly will paint her as Sheba, few months from now.

“There's a party this weekend.”

Cam nods.

There always is.

“You should come, doll. Bring Sextus. We could use a band.”


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It's the Babs/Pal sequel

Alright, lemme lay it out for you, lemme set the scene:

Palamedes Sextus has grey eyes, and a grey suit, silvery like frost is, like wolves are, like a January spent huddled on a train platform because the shifts start early, and the heat don’t pay for itself. Like Nevada bled out in his lap. Palamedes Sextus has a doctorate in philosophy, and a pianist’s hands, and an economy of flesh so blisteringly austere it’d make a stock-brocker jump out a window. All angles and edges. He sits with one ankle crossed over his opposite knee, and pushes his glasses up his nose with his middle finger, and sips his gin with his business face on, a blankly polite expression as smooth and sharp as mirror-glass. 

Naberius Tern has blue eyes, and thick hair, and skin as golden as a peach, as a lion, as a mansion is when the owner’s got no taste to speak of, so he gets a little lost in most rooms, on account of the goldness of him matches everything else, and you can hardly see him past the shine. His mouth has a mean twist at the corners. He looks sleek, and well-kept, and there’s a lot of things they say about Naberius Tern, but his Daddy’s got money, and so do his Parents, and so do the Tridentarii, so they don’t say none of ‘em where anybody could hear. He sits in a louche, easy sprawl, with one hip cocked up, like he’s only sitting like that because somebody’s looking, and he knows it.

He tosses his hair.

“If you’re trying to have me drug up on indecency charges, it’s been done,” he drawls, swirling his whiskey, “Doesn’t stick, I’m afraid.”

“You have my personal assurance, Mr. Tern, that’s not an angle I’m interested in pursuing,” says Palamedes, his voice as mild as the rest of his everything isn’t, “I wouldn’t want to end up like Duckie.”

“ _Poor_ Duckie. He always was a terrible swimmer, they never should’ve let him join in the first place,” Tern says, and you can hear the rich boy’s Trans-Atlantic drawl dripping off him, all listing and sing-song, and dragging his whole face along for the ride. He drags his finger around the rim of his glass, and those exquisite baby-blues he’s got freeze up hard and flinty and he sneers, “You really think you know something, don’t you?”

Trouble is, is that the flintiest, hardiest frost ain’t got a patch on Sextus’s grey glare, which is like crashing headlong into a steel vault door, and Tern’s almost too pretty to take seriously, which was always the problem with him. Mr. Sextus, which is how the man in question appellates himself on matters of _business_ , just sighs, plucking off his glasses to polish them on his lapel, eyes cast down.

“Mr. Tern. I know everything. Everybody knows that. I’m sure you do, too.”

And don’t he just; Naberius Tern curls his lip and nurses his drink, but he knows. 

Mr. Sextus raises his eyes, with a look like he could open you up like an oyster, pop the secrets right of your skull with the wintery _crack_ of a bone breaking. Only works without the glasses on, though, so he just keeps polishing away, up and down his tweedy breast while he talks.

Mr Sextus has a dry, frosty voice, and with it, he says:

“I know that Charles Godwin, ‘Duckie’ to his friends, was your teammate, rowing at Yale. I know you fucked him. I know that the two of you had a falling out. I will grant that I’ve not been able to find out why, but I know he threatened to expose you, which would’ve resulted in your expulsion, at the very least, and I know that you drowned him.”

He settles his glasses back on his nose like the whole affair is boring as all hell, with a stuffy little sigh.

“He struggle much?”

“Not as much as you’d think,” Naberius snaps. 

“Hit him in the head with an oar first. He dropped,” Naberius Tern dips a finger into his lowball, hovers his hand over it until a single drop of liquor _plinks_ back down off the pad of his fingertip, “like a rock. Duckie liked knowing things, too. He thought he’d found something out about the _business_ , and he wanted an introduction, and he wanted money. _I_ told him the girls wouldn’t like him. He was real sore about the whole thing. You wanna have me up for murder?”

Mr. Sextus passes his long, long hand over his eyes, and drops the business look.

“No, Mr. Tern,” he sighs again, “If I wanted you up for murder, I can think of six or seven people you’ve shot in the past year alone that’d be a better case than _Duckie_. I’m not here about the murders, Mr. Tern. I’d just like us to have a conversation. I’d just like to make sure that we understand each other.”

“Oh, _God_ ,” Naberius yawns, sinking back into his chair, all the air let out of him, boneless and bored, “This is about _her_ , isn’t it? I should have fucking known.”

You gotta feel for the boy. It’s always about _Her,_ and what’s worse is, there’s two of ‘em. Poor kid never got his day in the sun, even as gold as he is, and you can tell it chafes him something awful. You see it just cuts him up, like a steak. Chews at the meat of him, the marrow. He’s all hollowed out.

“That _parade_ coming in and out of Coronabeth’s fucking _boudoir_ is none of my fucking business. It’d serve the bitch right if I just hauled off and shot ‘em—they never let _me_ have any fun—but if your _partner_ wants to be one of them, she can go right ahead.”

He leans in, nice and slow, plants his hand on Palamedes’ knee.

“You have my _personal_ assurance,” he purrs.

Palamedes fits his fingers, one-two-three-four, into grooves of Naberius Tern’s knuckles. He wraps his other hand, one-two-three-four fingers, around the back of Naberius Tern’s neck, thub dug into the point of his jaw. Boy’s got long hands, coupla octaves, at least. The width of a man’s throat. Same old rag.

“Mr. Tern—”

“My friends call me Babs.”

“Babs, then,” Palamedes says, pulling the other man down, “Can you keep a secret?”

Babs hums, cheek turned into Palamedes arm, eyelashes crushed up to the veins there, batting ‘em like it’s the bottom of the goddamn ninth with bases loaded, and books cooked, and murmurs:

“Sure can.”

“Good. So can I.”

And you can tell the kid ain’t used to not getting his way, because Christ Almighty, does he look poleaxed. Floored. Gaping like a goldfish in his gold fishbowl of a room, while Mr. Sextus slides his hands away and slinks out of his chair. 

A musician, a good one, knows when to walk. 

He flashes his eyes behind his glasses.

“Thank you, Mr. Tern. Appreciate you taking the time.”

He’s halfway out the door when Tern calls out:

“I hope your _partner_ doesn’t think Beth’s gonna keep her! She gets bored quick.”

Mr. Tern is of the opinion that Coronabeth Tridentarius has no earthly notion of how to love anything.

And I suppose he’d be the one to know. 

* * *

What you gotta do, if you are in need of a very fine jazz duo for an evening’s entertainment, or pertinent information as regards to the affairs et. al of a certain Senator, or Mayor, or Chief of Whatever-the-Hell, is to ask for Sextus & Hect on 66th and Cross, the House of the Sixth, a grey little garret smashed in between a druggist, a novelist, and a billboard for Canaan Coffee Trading Co., the brew which the Almighty himself promised, there is no finer cup in town til the Kingdom of Heaven itself comes down. You gotta get in early, as the House of the Sixth keeps a criminal’s hours, and a musician’s, to the effect the lights are always burning, but nobody’s ever home. They got gigs to play. Books to fix. 

Cam’s up first, most days, but not today, crawling up for coffee to find Palamedes already hunched vulturine and broody over their Underwood’s guts. He chews on the pad of his thumb while he works. The ink stains his lips black.

“Carriage return’s jammed again,” he says.

There is a good deal of correspondence necessary to the industry of blackmail. The Underwood of the House of the Sixth is its bread and butter, a machine which Palamedes loves like a son, and works like a dog, and which is consequently nearly always broken. Damn typewriter jams in the cold, and the heat, and the rain, and most Tuesdays, and he would sooner saw his own leg in half than see it scrapped. They’re soft for strays, the Sixth. Strays and old things.

Cam shoulders him out of the way, knuckling at her eyelids. Yawns.

She says:

“You sleep with him?”

He did not. Officer, I have never seen this man in my life. Cam nods, and slots pieces back into place.

“You gonna?”

He presses his blackened lips together. Takes his glasses off. Puts ‘em back, takes ‘em off again, gnaws at his cuticles and sighs:

“Not at his place. Too exposed. He doesn’t have the clout to get us black-balled, not if the other two don’t back him. He could try charging us, but again, unless the Twins back his bid, no judge in town would hear it.” 

He shrugs. 

“Worst he could do is try to off me himself, but…” Palamedes continues, and when he does smile, it’s a hell of a thing, but smiling is not really the word for the threadbare curve that ripples over his face; probably there ain’t a word, it’s so thin a thing it’s barely there, but it’s _heavy_ , the not-smile he gives her before finishing, “Well. That’s what I’ve got you for, isn’t it?”

Showboating. Mr. Sextus, he do like his parlour tricks, sitting there like he ain’t strangled a soul in his whole life, not one snitch vanished into his hat. Like he don’t own stock in piano-wire for all the wrong reasons.

Cam snorts.

“I’m not sticking around to watch, you can send a note if you need me.”

And he wouldn’t. 

But Cam knows that.

* * *

Now, Mr. Sextus has been heard to opine, on more than one occasion, that, pretty as he is, he would very cheerfully introduce Mr. Tern’s teeth to a socket-wrench, or educate the gentleman in question on the more esoteric and fatal uses of the common piano-wire, and that Mr. Tern is cordially invited, whenever he likes, to try starting something and see how it shakes out. Not publically, you understand, but word does get around.

Mr. Tern, for his part, struts and sneers and goes on with the Trindentarius wetwork, and has been known to suggest that Mr. Sextus oughta consider whether he really knows what he thinks he knows, and whether or not it’s gonna save him, and that he would be very interested in seeing just how likely that very learned man at 66th and Cross calculates it is, that he could get the drop on Mr. Tern quick enough to get the wire up.

In the circles occupied by Misters Tern and Sextus, this means it’s a pretty safe bet that they’re gonna end up in bed together.

Nuts to anybody who pegged the over/under on it happening fresh off a fight, both of ‘em keyed up and bleeding, because it happened on any old Tuesday, and nobody had anything on that, not even Cam. But it was definitely a Tuesday. The Underwood was jammed.

Picture:

Palamedes Sextus, collarless, in his shirtsleeves, picking up one foot, then the other, bent up like a stork over his stove, of all the goddamn places, frying only one half of a pair of steaks. Cam’s not in. Cam’s eating out. He looks shorter without her, but still wintery and remote, palming tiredly at the base of his skull. His suspenders hang down by his hips.

He doesn’t look up, just mouths at a burn on the inside of his wrist, where the fat popped, with his back to Naberius Tern, who’s altogether too bright for the room, all flash and sneer and sitting like you know you’re gonna gotta get looked at. Tern’s out on his ass. They kick that boy to the curb once a week these days. He stalks in like a stray, like he don’t know what to do with himself, stretched in his borrowed chair with his off-hours chorus girl sprawl, and all Palamedes does is tell him the Steinway’s in the next room, just had her tuned, and if Tern’s got even a passing interest in breathing, he’ll let it alone. 

“You think you could?” Tern croons nastily. Can’t stand to be ignored, that kid. Can’t stand to not be important.

Can’t say I blame him.

Palamedes, though, Palamedes is accustomed to nobody minding the help, so he just chews thoughtfully, don’t make no nevermind to him, doesn’t even bother to sit down, just props his hip up on the windowsill. Canaan House Coffee Trading Co. looms like the End of Days over his shoulder.

“I just had it tuned,” he repeats, “it’s not cheap.”

He lays his plate down. They got a soft spot, over 66th and Cross, for old things, and for strays.

He plants his hand, nice and slow, on Naberius Tern’s knee. Curls the other one around the back of his neck.

“You should know, Mr. Tern, that I am an excellent swimmer. Do we understand each other?”

Slow. Soft, and rapsing, his lips brushing up against the shell of Naberius’s ear.

It all just...slips, the whole all of it just slips sideways, and Palamedes slides into Tern’s lap like rain slides down a window, and it’s slow, but there’s about as much teeth in it as you’d expect. Naberius—or Babs, considering, bites at his mouth, and it tastes like grease, and salt, and Babs sucks at the bloody dryness of it like he’s starving. He tugs impatiently at Palamedes’ skinny shirtfront, fingertips digging into his ribs. It’s a mean-spirited, clawing drag, like Tern’d open him right up if he could. Tern’s got a list of soft spots; the back of the knees, the soft, papery skin at the inside of elbows and wrists. Eyes. Got soft hands, too. None of it’s doing him any good.

Palamedes catches him by the wrist, and pins his hand to the chair. Pins the rest of him to the chair with a long, frosty look.

“Let’s not be insulting,” he drawls.

And it ain’t that Babs is much bigger, it’s just Palamedes weighs next to nothing at all, the vaguest shade of pressure, straddling his waist with Tern’s cock rutting shallowly against his stomach. They’re both dressed still, all buttons buttoned, all cufflinks present and accounted for, just shifting against each other with a syrupy, rolling grind. Can’t be enough to be really satisfying for either one of ‘em, but Palamedes, at least, don’t seem to care very much. He just keeps pushing his glasses back up his nose and pushing the heel of his hand into Naberius’s throat when the other man tries to buck him off. He’s barely even breathing hard.

“Think _I_ should be the one who’s insulted,” Naberius tries, plastering on his very best smug, come-get-it grin, “You planning on _doing_ anything?”

Palamedes hums.

“I might. You’d owe me.”

And Naberius hisses through his perfect, rich-boy teeth, but it’s been so _long_ , they keep that kid on a short leash, those Tridentarii, don’t like to share their toys even when they don’t want ‘em no more, and he’s _hard,_ and it’s _hard_ , it’s so hard to keep his head clear. Palamedes rolls his hips down again, harder, regarding him steadily over his glasses. He drags one finger, just the one, up the straining line of Tern’s cock. Lofts his eyebrow like it really doesn’t matter to him, like he’s not just as hard himself. 

“You make _her_ wait like this?”

But Naberius, he chokes on the last part, throat fluttering under Palamedes’ cool, dry palm, and it’s just all going sideways, all at once, slipping out of hand, and Palamedes, he doesn’t make a _sound_ other than the one obscure, oblique hitch in his breathing, that could mean anything at all. For a moment, his mouth works silently, back and forth. Assessing.

Here’s the problem with a kid like Tern:

A kid like that wants too openly. A kid like that, with a silver spoon stuck in his craw and a chip on his shoulder, he’ll let the want make him careless. Naberius Tern is starting to sweat, and leaking through the very fine wool of his immaculate trousers. He can’t quite manage to keep his eyes open long enough to watch Palamedes’ mouth stretch around his cock, he misses the prim little twitch with which the other man tugs at his trousers as he sinks to the floor. 

So he can’t stop himself, he gives the whole game away by tugging at Palamedes’ hair like all he ever wanted was to be close to somebody and coming, red-mouthed and whimpering, into the tight heat of the taller man’s throat. 

Palamedes pats his knee almost fondly, and you’d think he was just adjusting himself, still hard, instead of folding Naberius Tern’s pocketbook into his own trousers as he stands. 

Coronabeth Tridentarius gets bored quick. Best to have insurance ahead of time. Nothing personal. 

“You might have enough to get out from under them, if you wanted,” Palamedes murmurs. It’s a lifeline Tern won’t take, and they both know it.

Still.

66th and Cross. Soft spots.

**Author's Note:**

> Hit yr gal up on twitter @gin_n_chthonic, or tumblr @thefaustaesthetic


End file.
